San Joaquin Votes: Exercise Your Rights!
A Local Guide to Elections
Votes For Women: A Case Study
An oversight by the New Jersey legislature gave women in the state the right to vote from 1790 until 1807, when they corrected their “mistake.” Starting in 1838, some individual states allowed women to vote in school elections. Over time, individual states gave taxpaying women voting rights in local elections. The western states were the first to give women full voting rights: Wyoming (1890), Colorado (1893), Utah and Idaho (1896), Washington (1910), California (1911), and Oregon and Arizona (1912).
The fight for women’s right to vote on a national level officially began in 1848 at a women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Women such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton launched a crusade towards national woman’s suffrage by circulating petitions and lobbying Congress to amend the Constitution to give women voting rights.
Over the decades, women worked tirelessly as they organized, petitioned, and picketed in favor of the right to vote. By the early 1900s, two organizations emerged in the national woman’s suffrage movement. The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was a moderate organization that campaigned for women’s voting rights on a state-by-state basis. The National Woman’s Party (NWP) was a more militant organization. Members of the NWP picketed the White House to convince President Woodrow Wilson and Congress to pass a woman suffrage amendment. Through the combined efforts of the NAWSA and NWP, national woman suffrage became a reality.
In May 1919, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed with a two-thirds majority vote in Congress. The amendment was sent to the states for ratification, where it needed three-fourths of the states to approve it. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the amendment giving women the right to vote. Twenty-four year old Harry Burns was responsible for breaking the 48-48 vote tie in the Tennessee General Assembly. With a letter in his pocket from his mother urging him, “Don’t forget to be a good boy” and “vote for suffrage,” he cast the final vote in favor of national woman’s suffrage.
It Happened Here: The Suffrage Movement in San Joaquin County
In the following photos, we will take a closer look at prominent human rights and suffrage activists in San Joaquin County and Northern California during the woman suffrage movement.
Laura DeForce Gordon (1838-1907)
Studio portrait of Laura DeForce Gordon, circa 1860s. Laura DeForce Gordon was a suffragist, journalist, and lawyer in San Joaquin County. Born in Pennsylvania in 1838, she was well-educated and an accomplished speaker. She married and moved to California in 1870, eventually settling in Lodi. It was during this time she became involved in the woman suffrage movement.
Laura gave a speech in San Francisco called, “The Elective Franchise: Who Shall Vote?” on February 18, 1868. The speech helped launch the suffrage movement in California. In 1870, she helped organize the California Woman Suffrage Association. In 1884, she was elected president and served for ten years. She lectured on women’s suffrage throughout California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington territory, gaining the respect of national suffrage leaders.
A true maverick, DeForce Gordon founded the first daily newspaper in America published by a woman, The Stockton Daily Leader, and was the second woman admitted to the California Bar.
From the San Joaquin County Historical Society Collection
May 15, 1904.
L. Clare Davis (1873-1954)
L. Clare Davis was born in Fresno in 1873. Having grown up in a prominent family in Fresno and Visalia, she received numerous educational opportunities and was able to attend the prestigious Mills College in Oakland, where she studied writing. After college she received a position as an editor for The Fresno Expositor, and married a prominent Stocktonian.
In 1897, the Equal Suffrage Club of Stockton, headed and funded by the prominent Sperry family, actively lobbied the local Republican and Democratic parties for a candidate for the Stockton School District (now SUSD) from their membership. After much debate in local papers, the parties agreed to co-endorse a relatively unknown candidate, the recently settled L. Clare Davis.
A former suffrage activist in college, Davis was nominated and won election to the Stockton School Board, becoming San Joaquin County’s first elected woman. While anti-suffrage interests attempted to make Davis’s position powerless and tried to cast doubt on her ability to make decisions, she remained an active member of the Board until 1912, winning multiple re-election campaigns against local men.
Dr. Minerva Goodman (1876-1967)
Dr. Minerva Goodman was born in North Dakota in 1876. She received her medical degree from the University of Minnesota 1902. In 1904, she opened a medical practice in Stockton and was active in many civic organizations.
Dr. Goodman was an advocate for women’s voting rights. In 1904, she helped organize the Stockton Political Equality Club, serving as president, secretary, and public relations officer throughout her involvement. She was involved with the California Equal Suffrage Association, Wage Earners’ Equal Suffrage League of San Francisco, and a charter member of the League of Women Voters.
An active leader in the community, Dr. Goodman served professionally as the chief medical official for the Stockton School District (now SUSD). In 1907, she became the second woman in County history to run for office, against her good friend L. Clare Davis, for trustee at-large of Stockton School District. Despite a narrow defeat, Dr. Goodman remained civically active throughout her life, serving on numerous organization boards and committees.
April 10, 1907.